I am a 22-year old student Office Management, I study translating and interpreting of English, French and Spanish at the University College of Ghent. Intercultural Communication is one of my subjects in my study program and for this purpose I opened this blog where I will publish now and then my experiences with people from other cultures.
For a start some background information about myself.
As mentionned above I study interpreting English, French and Spanish. I chose these languages for several reasons.
Firstly I chose French because I am half Belgian and half French. I speak fluently French as I speak it at home with my family. I travelled a lot to France to visit my family who live everywhere in France: Lille, Lyon, the Provence, the Pyrenees...France is a very important country to me and I consider it to be my second home country after Belgium which is my home country. It goes without saying that I am very familiar with the French culture, language and people.Basically I don't see much difference between the Belgians and the French but there are some which I will discuss later.
Secondly I chose English as it is the most important language in the world and people of my generation have grown up with this language thanks to American tv-shows and movies, which are all spoken in English and subtitled in Dutch on Flemish television.
Finally I had to choose between German and Spanish for the third language. I had already taken German classes in high school and I did not like it very much. Besides, I like southern countries, their language and their culture and this is why I chose to study Spanish.
In the class of 18 November we had a lesson about the differences in signs between cultures. This reminded me of something I saw once on tv.
Last year, during summer, I was watching an American reality show, I forgot the name of the program, but the show was about a big holiday resort for young adults where they can party all the time. You were only allowed to enter this resort if you were at least 21 years old. At a certain moment a random guy had to show his ID to the bar when he wanted to order some drinks. The date of birth was written like this: 11/03/1989. At that moment we were in the summer of 2010. The barkeeper called security as according to him, this guy was only 20 years old. After explaining half an hour that he was Spanish and in Spain dates are written different than in the USA, the security let him stay in the resort. In Spain, first the day is written, then the month and finally the year. In America the month comes first, then the day and finally the year. Is goes without saying that the barkeeper was not really wrong to call the security. However, the Spanish guy got lucky that the security believed him.
During my intercultural contacts I noticed that English is the lingua franca for people from different countries. When I speak with foreigners I often ask them which languages they speak. Very often they speak French, and as I speak French fluently, I would rather speak French than English. Sometimes these foreigners even admit they speak better French than English, so I propose to speak French and they agree to do so. However, when I meet the same person later, automatically we start speaking English, even if we both speak French better. This is because we are kind of trained to speak English with people who do not speak our language, unless we do speak their language (fluently). Most Flemish people will speak French to French people and no English. Some cultures appreciate it very much if you speak their language and will automatically talk to you in their language if they know you are able to speak it (e.g. Spanish people prefer talking Spanish to me as I'm able to speak it).
Sometimes it is also important to communicate clearly in English and to use simple words, as not all people speak or understand English very well. Sometimes you can notice from a person's accent from which country he is. Some words or syllables are difficult to pronounce in English. Spanish people tend to say: "Espanish" for Spanish, "Datch" for Dutch (as there is no such sound in Spanish) French people have besides their typical French 'r' also difficulties pronouncing the word "the" and just pronounce it as "ze". Sometimes you can guess which expression is used in a language, e.g. once a Spanish girl told me "I had reason". She meant that "I was right" but as she did not remember this expression in English she just translated literally from Spanish (Tienes razón).
The link below shows you a funny example of what I meant above.
A couple of weeks ago I went to the East Cantons of Belgium (Eupen etc.) with our college. We went to Trier for 1 day, where we visited the Christmas market. At a certain moment me and my friend wanted to order something to eat from a stand. We just went to the stand and ordered some things. After to have been served we saw a queue of people looking quite mad at us. We did not realise this was the queue for the stand, so in fact we skipped the queue (there were like 7 people in it). The Germans were queuing nicely one after each other at the stand, something we do not really do in Belgium (we just try to get to the saleswoman with least queuing as possible). This reminded me of this stereotype about Germans: they are very disciplined.
During my school period I did an exchange trip to Norway. I went for 1 week to Alesund, a beautiful scenic town at the coast. The first thing I noticed about Norwegians is that they are very quiet. They speak very quietly and with very monotonous voices. It is like if they were not able to express emotion in their voices. This was really strange for me.
As you will have noticed if you have read my previous messages, I met some Spanish people during the past few years. They are very different from Norwegians in the way they speak: they speak a lot, very rapidly and very loud. In fact they show a lot of emotion in the way they speak (Italians do it even more I think). I think Flemish people are somewhere in between of these two ways of speaking; sometimes we put a lot of emotion in our voices, sometimes it can be very monotonous too.
This makes part of the culture I guess: people from southern countries are more hot-tempered and show emotions more easily, people from the north tend to be more distant and cool. Although this may be stereotypes, I think it does make sense.
Now I will share you some thoughts about my second home country, France. As my mother is French and therefore I speak French at home, I am very familiar with this country. I often watch French television programs and talk sometimes with my French relatives.
Basically I do not see a lot of differences between French and Flemish people. They both have almost the same values. Okay, there are the clichés (France = wine, French bread, cheese, the 'baret' and so on, Belgium = fries, chocolate, beer, ...)
But besides these stereotypes the people are not very different from each other.
Maybe there is just one big difference: the French are (very) proud of their country. They consider France to be an example to the rest of the world. France is the first country which came up with the 'human rights'. Their device "liberté, égalité, fraternité" is very important to them. As France is a feminine culture, they like to talk about everything that appears in the media, give their thoughts about anything and like questionning issues that would maybe not be questionned in Belgium.
French people are generally speaking often more tolerant of immigrants than Belgians. This is because France have an important colonial history, in which they tried to conquer the world. This also explains why French people consider themselves as important in the world whether Belgians do not The black community and Muslim community is far more present in France than in Belgium, while a lot of French people have Italian, Spanish or Portuguese ancestors.
Jokes about black people or Muslim people are taken seriously in France and these communities (and especially the French media) will be offended and react very heavily. Walloons also have this kind of viewpoint (like the French) and often feel more easily offended by Flemish people, if the Flemish make fun of them.
Finally, French people are quite chauvinist, this means they consider their language (and their culture) as very important and foreigners who live there (or even go on holiday) should be able to speak it. Walloons tend to share the same viewpoint about this like the French and this is why they are not very likely to learn Dutch. As I speak French myself I also consider it to be more 'beautiful' than Dutch. However this is just my opinion and like we say in French, "les goûts et les couleurs ne se discutent pas".
This is it, this will be my last message about foreign cultures. As tomorrow I have my exam of Intercultural Communication, I studied the theories of several anthropologists, e.g. Geert Hofstede, the 7 dimensions of Fons Trompenaars, Kluckholn and Strodtbeck's Dimensions of Culture and so on.
I compared a lot of cultures with each other and concluded several things. Two of my best friends are foreigners but have lived for more than 10 years in Belgium now. One friend is Lituanian (but his parents are Russian), the other one is Armenian (although his passport says 'Azerbeidjan').
Last summer I went out with them and at a certain moment during the night, we were standing in front of a bar, which is run by Armenians. The bar owner was going to leave and head home so he started the engine of his (expensive) car. After he had his engine turned on, he went back into the bar and let the engine of his car turn for 10 minutes, with the left front door of his car widely opened. I had never seen someone doing this before as this is very dangerous to have your car immediately stolen.
So I was standing there with my 2 foreign friends and said to them: "The guy is crazy, I could just jump into his car and drive right away". My 2 friends looked at me and had the same expression on their faces, full of disbelief. They answered me: "But you can't do that".
I responded: "But what if I did?" and there is no saying that we started arguing with each other. Later I came to realise that in their culture this is a quite normal situation, as people trust each other much more. Russian, for instance, are collectivists while Belgians are individualists. Collectivist mean that people do not think only for themselves but also try to think what is best for everyone and especially for their friends (in this situation my Armenian friend knew the Armenian bar owner quite well). So the Armenian owner trusted us and expected that we would watch out for his car. I suppose Belgians would never expect such a thing from anyone, especially as the Armenian owner did not say anything to us about guarding his car.
In the class of 18 November we had a lesson about the differences in signs between cultures. This reminded me of something I saw once on tv.
